Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Home, sweet home,’ Sarge said, and killed the engine.

‘If this is a con, I’ll kill you.’

He seemed to fill three-quarters of the tiny vehicle’s front seat. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘Get out.’

Sarge led the way up to the front door. ‘Open it,’ I said. ‘Then stand still.’

He opened the door and stood still. I stood still. We stood there for about three minutes, and nothing happened. The only moving thing was a fat grey squirrel that had ventured into the middle of the yard to curse us.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go in.’

It was a rat warren. The one sixty-watt bulb cast a dingy glow over the whole room, leaving shadows like starved bats in the corners. Newspapers were scattered helter-skelter. Drying clothes were hung on a sagging rope. In one corner there was an ancient Videomaster tv. In the opposite corner was a rickety sink and a stark, rust-stained bathtub on claw feet. A hunting rifle stood beside it. A tremendously fat yellow tom was asleep on the kitchen table. The whole place smelled of wood-rot and sweat.

‘It beats living raw,’ Sarge said.

I could have argued the point, but didn’t. ‘Where’s your quarter?’

‘In the bedroom.’

‘Let’s go get it.’

‘Not yet.’ He turned around slowly, his concrete face hard. ‘I want your word you ain’t going to kill me when you get it.’

‘How you going to make me keep it?’

He smiled, a slow, sleepy smile like a fissure opening in a glacier. ‘No way at all. But I got you pegged.’

‘Do tell.’

‘The money isn’t the only thing with you. If it was, I’d have tried for you before this. But you had to clean Barney’s slate, too. Okay, it’s clean. Keenan crossed him and Keenan’s dead. If you want the bundle, too, okay. Maybe three-quarters will be enough — and mine has got a great big X on it. But you don’t get it unless you promise what I’m paying for — my life.’

‘How do I know you won’t come after me?’

‘I will, sonny,’ the Sarge said softly. ‘With a big gun. Because then it’s going to be a new ball game.’

I laughed. ‘All right. Throw in Jagger’s address and you’ve got your promise. I’ll keep it, too.’

The Sarge shook his head slowly. ‘You don’t want to play with Jagger, fella, Jagger will eat you up.’

I put the .45 on full cock.

‘All right. He’s in Coleman, Massachusetts. A ski lodge. Can you find it?’

‘I’ll find it. Let’s get your piece, Sarge.’

The Sarge looked me over once more, closely. Then he nodded. We went into the bedroom.

A huge brass-railed bed, more newspapers, stacks of magazines — it was the living-room in spades. The walls were papered with pin-ups. A huge record player, the kind with the horn, sat on the floor.

The Sarge didn’t hesitate. He picked up the lamp on the night-table and pried the base off it. His quarter of the map was neatly rolled up inside; he held it out wordlessly.

‘Throw it,’ I invited.

The Sarge smiled and tossed the tube of paper to me. ‘There goes the money,’ he said.

‘I’m going to keep my promise,’ I said. ‘Consider yourself lucky. Out in the other room.’

Something cold flickered in his eyes. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘See that you stay in one place for a while. Move.’

We went out into the littered, madhouse kitchen again, a nifty little parade of two. The Sarge stood underneath the naked lightbulb, back to me, his shoulders hunched, anticipating the gunbarrel that was going to groove his head very shortly. I was just lifting the gun to clout him when the light blinked out.

The shack was suddenly pitch black.

I threw myself over to the right; Sarge was already gone. I could hear the thump and tumble of newspapers as he hit the floor in a flat dive. Then silence. Utter and complete.

I waited for my night vision, but when it came there was no help. The place was like a mausoleum in which a thousand dim shadows loomed. And the Sarge knew every one of them.

I knew about Sarge; material on him hadn’t been hard to spade up. He had been a sergeant in World War II, and no one even bothered with his real name any more; he was just the Sarge, big and murderous and tough. He had been a commando in the Big War.

Somewhere in the dark he was moving in on me. He must have known the place like the back of his hand, because there wasn’t a sound, not a squeaking board, not a foot scrape. But I could feel him getting closer and closer, flanking from the left or the right or maybe pulling a tricky one and coming in straight ahead.

The stock of the gun was very sweaty in my hand, and I had to control the urge to fire it wildly, randomly. I was very aware that I had three-quarters of the pie in my pocket. I didn’t bother wondering why the lights had gone out. Not until the powerful flashlight stabbed in through the window, sweeping the floor in a wild, random pattern that just happened to catch the Sarge, frozen in a half-crouch seven feet to my left. His eyes glowed greenly in the bright cone of light, like cat’s eyes.

He had a glinting razor blade in his right hand. I suddenly remembered the way his hand had been spidering up his coat lapel in Keenan’s carport. He had gotten it out of his collar.

The Sarge said one word into the flash beam. ‘Jagger?’

I don’t know who got him first. A heavy-sounding pistol fired once behind the flashlight beam, and I pulled the trigger of Barney’s .45 twice, pure reflex. The Sarge was thrown twistingly back against the wall with force enough to knock him out of one of his boots.

The flashlight snapped off.

I fired one shot at the window, but hit only glass. I lay on my side in the darkness and realised that Jagger was out there. And, although there were twelve rounds of ammunition back in my car, there was only one left in my gun.

Don’t fool with Jagger, fella , the Sarge had said. Jagger will eat you up.

I had a pretty good picture of the room in my head now. I got up in a crouch and ran, stepping over Sarge’s sprawled legs and into the corner. I got into the bathtub and poked my eyes up over the edge. There was no sound. No sound at all. Even the wood’s noises seemed to have stopped. The bottom of the tub was gritty with flaked-off bathtub ring. I waited.

About five minutes went by. It seemed like five hours.

Then the light flicked on again, this time in the bedroom window. I ducked my head while the light bounced through the doorway. It probed briefly and clicked off.

Silence again. A long, loud silence. On the dirty surface of Sarge’s porcelain bathtub I saw everything. Barney, with the clotted blood on his belly. Sarge, standing frozen in Jagger’s flashlight beam, holding the razor blade professionally between thumb and first finger. And a dark shadow with no face. Jagger. The fifth quarter.

Suddenly there was a voice, just outside the door. It was soft and cultured, almost womanish, but not effete. It sounded deadly and competent as hell.

‘Hey, you.’

I kept quiet. He wasn’t getting my number without dialling a little.

When the voice came again it was by the window. ‘I’m going to kill you, fella. I came to kill them. Now there’s just you.’

A pause while he shifted position again. When the voice came, it came from the window just over my head — the one above the bathtub. My guts crawled up into my throat. If he flashed that light now—

‘No fifth wheels need apply, fella. Sorry.’

I could barely hear him moving to his next position. It turned out to be back to the doorway. ‘I’ve got my quarter with me, fella. You want to come and take it?’

I felt an urge to cough and repressed it.

‘Come and get it, fella.’ His voice was mocking. ‘The whole pie. Come and take it away.’